It was around this time last year 2014 when I went for the Literature festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan. It was an incredible place to be at. I mean, a festival and books everywhere! That's what makes me happy.
My friend and I sat amongst the audience to watch the distribution of the 2014 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature inside the walls of Diggi House in Jaipur and watched as Cyrus Mistry took away the award. He came on stage, read a couple of pages from this award winning book and accepted the award from the hands of Mr. Kabir Bedi and Ms. Gloria Steinem. That was the moment I decided to read the book. So, I went to the store selling all the short-listed books and found this book to be everywhere. I picked up my copy. It took me about a week to read the book and a lot more time to get out of its hangover.
Here's my review of this cool breeze of a book.
The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so for them. - Lois McMaster Bujold.
A man is in love. He leaves his home, his family and his dignity for his love. He chooses untouchablity, abandonment and a life of a vermin for his love. He chooses the Towers of Silence for his love. His love is dead.
Phiroze Elchidana is a khandia in the Bombay of the time when India was about to break the shackles of a foreign rule and breathe into free air. He belongs to a small community of the Parsee’s. His job as a khandia is to collect the dead, perform purification rituals and rites and place the body on top of the Towers of Silence for the vultures to feed on. It’s a sad job, and it has rendered him untouchable. Phiroze loves his drunken nights and easy banter that flew amongst him and other khandias and nussesalar (Nussesalars being corpse bearers who perform priest-like duties for the dead, but are still considered equal to the khandias in status). But he wasn't born this way. He was born into a family of priests, who had a social standing amongst the community and were utmost respected. He received a good education (which he was quite inept at, even though his father tried his level best) and always had enough to eat. This is a story about a boy from the fire temple who ended up as a man from the Towers of Silence.
Phiroze was a wanderer. An explorer. He used to set off into the great city of Bombay and roam around like a tramp. He used to go to places where the son of a Zoroastrian priest could never be seen. He went to Muslim burial grounds, Hindu cremation fields - where bodies of the dead would be burning whenever he went - and even to the remains of the old British crematorium at Land’s End. He was a free bird, full of secrets and desires.
This was until he saw her at the Towers of Silence for the first time. Sepideh, or Seppy, as he lovingly called her, was the daughter of a khandia and loving her was taboo. Loving her meant being ostracized by society and expulsion from the fire temple. Marrying her meant his life was to start and end at the Towers of Silence there-after, but which Parsee’s life ended elsewhere anyway. He knew all this well but love knows no boundaries. He left all he had behind and married her. He now had nothing else to do except be a khandia himself. Be an outcast. A social pariah. He didn't mind that as long as he had Sepideh by his side.
“During a funeral I accompanied my mother to in this period, I caught my first glimpse of her in the far distance. Long-boned and gangly, with a shock of thick uncombed hair, a wild-looking creature about my age…who was she? What was she doing there all by herself in the woods?”
The skies turned grey with the death of Seppy. His love was gone. Forever. Now, he lives with his father in law and the daughter that Seppy left behind. Phiroze is in bad shape. Even as he deals with his own grief, he must work to ease the passing of others. That, and the hate and fear of the contractor kept him busy.
Some moments in the book are peculiarly plaintive, like when he weighs on his reaction to the contractor’s sexual advances and realizes he didn't find the experience repugnant.
“Strangely, I felt, after a very long time, human again; grateful to Buchia (the contractor) that he saw me as more than just some cadaverous, unclean thing whose very breath it was undesirable to commingle with.”
The shortage of vultures in Bombay around that time makes for a very interesting part in the book. Less vultures lead to the rotting of the bodies on the towers. Half-eaten and mangled dead bodies can be a grotesque sight to see and it was witnessed by the khandias. It was dealt with by the khandias.
Cyrus Mistry came across this story while working on a proposal for a documentary on corpse bearers for channel 4. Although the documentary didn't as much shine amongst the masses, this book made it happen. The story, even though intervened by more realistic and relatable historic events like the mention of the ‘Quit India Moment’ and the ‘1936 Olympics’, and predominated by Death per say, is a tale of incomplete love. What would it have been like if Seppy were living. Would she have been happy, satisfied? How would she have loved their only daughter? Phiroze didn't know, but he knew one thing for sure, he would have been happy. He would have been satisfied. He would have been content.
I immensely enjoyed the reunion of the Elchidana family in the later stages of the book. When Phiroze goes to meet his father to ask him a favor, he ensures him that he cleaned himself thoroughly prior to appearing before him, just as he had taught him. His father invites him in the house for the first time after he was forbidden.
“In that instant, I saw something in his eyes, or imagined it: a flicker of warmth that made me want to embrace my father— but I’m glad I held myself back; for as I entered he stepped aside, rather deliberately, ensuring no physical contact was made between us.”
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is a journey into a world so real, one wouldn't believe it happens in our very own country. It reflects upon the diversity that exists on this land and secularism that is prevalent in the very veins of this nation. This is the story about the different ways people die in our society.
KST.
Book: Chronicle Of A Corpse Bearer.
Author: Cyrus Mistry.
Author: Cyrus Mistry.
Price: ₹495/-
Pages: 247.
Publisher: Aleph
Pages: 247.
Publisher: Aleph
Grabbing a good book to read is refreshing and stimulating for our brains and we are here to help you decide what to read next. Wednesday booked is a segment that features book reviews every Wednesday. This segment also feature reviews of book shops situated across Delhi NCR. So that you know which nook and corner of Delhi to go to find your favorite book.
So, keep reading. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
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